


Real

by twowritehands



Category: The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: AU, Ace Lives, Bi-Curiosity, Demisexuality, First Time Sex, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Nick is on the ace spectrum, highschool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 16:51:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2857988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twowritehands/pseuds/twowritehands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Gatsby had been born rich and Nick had grown up in that little house next door?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Real

I grew up in Gatsby’s shadow, both literally and figuratively. The house my parents bought sat on the very corner of the Gatsby family estate, cast in the shadow of their large mansion so that dusk fell an hour earlier for us than anybody else in West Egg. I think before us, the house was kept for servants, and the assumption remained for a lot of people that it still was, but the fact was that my parents were in no way employed by the Gatsbys and were therefore, quite friendly with them.

As a natural result of this, the Gatsby boy and I were the best of friends from the earliest age, despite our differences. Young boys do not care about stations so long as they have a play fellow and our yards touched—in our minds that was as good as married. We _had_ to play together whether we liked each other or not. I can remember some spite sprinkled throughout our history, in those instances where Jay’s money and opportunity made me bitter in the face of my own dismal prospects, but by and large he was my best friend, and I was his.

In an attempt to hone some work ethic into me, my parents assigned me the responsibility of keeping the grass trimmed. It was my one household chore which I ignored with deliberate intent. Pushing a mower around even our patch of yard, I felt, was something beneath me, and so I got Jay’s gardener to do it for me for practically nothing--what was an extra twenty square feet after two football fields? Whenever our corner got too bad, the man was happy to scourge the eye sore from view, the grass was eventually always cut, and my parents had to be satisfied.

Having Jay as a best friend elevated me in my mind. The moment I stepped across the visible line where my raggedy grass ended and his pristine lawn began, I was not just the son of a shop-keeper. Suddenly, I was someone who belonged in rolling green lawns and neatly trimmed hedges and vast echoing entrance halls and marble swimming pools--there I could think and look at the world from a higher vantage point, like a bird up in the air able to see the whole map of his life as he planned his journey through it, and my parents allowed it. They allowed anything so long as I kept out of trouble and stayed on course to take over the store one day, and I suppose in their minds, I could not have been straying too far from the path by simply going next door.

Jay and I got up to the usual sport and past time of young men left on their own--Jay’s parents were perpetually out of town on business and gave him the run of the place--and so Gatsby’s house became the only place worth showing up to after school. He served ice cream and yogurt in the garden, and even kids from other schools arrived and gathered in packs to glare at rival teams across the warm grass. The majority of any spite in our friendship sprang from these parties, when the occasional classmate finally observed the little house squeezed into the far corner and, pointing, asked, “Who lives _there_?”

“I do,” I’d smirk, always entertained by people’s ignorance. Though I was not the only one to be found at Gatsby’s at all hours of the day, I was the only one with such a built in excuse and to me that excuse was obvious.

“You do?” they would exclaim, “Since when?”

“Forever,” I would say, and then the girls would giggle or the boys would draw up a deep breath and they would all say in some form or another, “Why Nick, I had no idea.”

When this happened, I imagined I could feel the subtle shift in opinion, a cold glaze enter their eyes, and if ever they requested something from me after that, I took it as a personal offense. “Get your own damn ice cream, I’m not a servant!”

I remember one time Jay grabbed me by the elbow to stop me throwing chocolate malt into Tom Bucanhan’s face. “Easy, old sport,” Jay said. “No one thinks you’re a servant, do they Daisy?”

“Of course not,” Daisy, the head cheerleader, said. “I thought you were a border here, to be honest.”

That, for whatever reason, eased my mind. I would rather be a guest at The Hotel Gatsby than the son of the gardener. That was the summer that I nearly fell in love with Daisy, but I happened to mention her name to my parents and they informed me of the connection the Carroways had with her family that made her a cousin and she immediately lost all mystery to me, though Jay stayed under her spell for another year or so.

There were always girls like Daisy popping up in front of Jay with bright smiles and long eyelashes. He was naturally the first one to solve the great mystery of sex and shared all the facts with me so that my itching curiosity ebbed and I lost the swagger it took to maintain any sort of relationship with a girl I did not find particularly interesting as a person. Therefore, I knew the facts as theory only, but counted that as enough. I wasn’t all the way conscious of how different that made me.

As a result of my warm upbringing, promised future security in the hard-ware store, and permission to go about as I pleased in the meantime, I was a fairly open minded individual free of pressure. In high school, while everyone else around me were bumping into each other in desperation to find a match--Gatsby repeatedly ricocheting off Daisy and getting into fist fights with Tom Bucanahan over her--I was content on my own, knowing and fully expecting that one day I would find love and that I would treat it with a little more care than my careless classmates by giving it everything I had by way of forever. I don’t think it mattered to me where that love would come from, so long as it did.

I had these notions fully formed and eloquent in my head already the evening Jay turned from the phonograph in the corner of his bedroom and asked me, “Nick, what do you think about girls?”

I was flipping idly through his stack of records, still reading song titles and I shrugged. “They’re nice.”

He nodded shortly. “But do you _want_ one?”

Only then did I realize his real question. That very afternoon, I had brushed Jordan Baker aside, tired of her flirtations ever since she cheated during her golf tournament. I could see myself with an athlete, but not a dishonest one. I opened my mouth to explain this, but then I happened to meet Jay’s eye.

Written plainly in his expression was a long list of others girls--not just Jordan Baker--whom I had dumped for any little reason I could find. I was hunting perfection and I wasn’t afraid to admit it, but in that moment, in the soft mien of his face, I realized what perfection meant to me.

I swallowed, suddenly felt like my lunch was going to swell out of me--not from any disgust, but from the most potent bout of nerves I had ever experienced. Gatsby--that was all I had been looking for, someone like my best friend….who was looking at me now with open curiosity.

My palms began to sweat, and the sticky humidity between my fingers distracted me from thinking of any real answer. Suddenly, Jay’s body lowered onto the corner of the bed next to me, so close our clothes brushed. His shoulder bumped into mine. “It’s okay, you know. I won’t tell anybody.”

My throat clicked with my next dry swallow of air. I could barely comprehend what we were talking about--it wasn’t man versus woman in my head. It never was, it was both or neither; it was only ever _love_ \--but I understood that Jay had concluded wildly that I had built up a front or some sort and was secretly tortured with firm homosexual tendencies, which I was pretty certain was untrue, though at the moment I couldn’t think of anything but how warm and strong Jay’s leg felt pressed against mine, his money-smell washing over me, and it all at once felt like some strong tendencies indeed.

“Jay, it’s…” I trailed off because I had already put a great deal of thought into what it would be like to be in love, and I felt it all and sheer panic at the same time. I could read it on Jay’s face he meant to explore another mystery right now, and I half wanted it to happen and I half knew better than to let it without knowing up front if he loved me like he loved the list of girls he toyed with to make Daisy jealous.

“What about Daisy?” I asked. She was my cousin, after all. I suddenly felt bonded to her with no rights to tamper with her property. And I didn’t fancy becoming her enemy over this, because if it happened then it would be war between us. He was after all, _my_ best friend first long before she became any prize worth winning, so he belonged to me.

“I told you, no one has to know.” He shrugged his shoulders like we weren’t practically sitting on top of each other, like I was breathing normally and this was a debate about baseball. “Just trying to help you, old sport,” he said with a laugh in his voice that sounded kind and playful at the same time. He always called me old sport whenever he meant to remind me that we’ve been best friends longer than we’ve been able to speak plainly. “If you’re confused about girls o-or boys…you know you’re not the only one,” he added the last part with sudden firmness to his voice, a resolute statement that made my stomach flip.

“Really?” I heard myself ask as I reeled backwards.

Jay looked nervous which was an expression I knew only I had ever seen on him before, and nodded. My heart kicked up some gravel as it sped off with my breath and I laughed. “Well, that’s a relief.”

He turned big eyes on me that were sparkling with laughter and affection and I don’t remember thinking about it at all. I just kissed him. Our lips were dry and soft until our mouths broke open and Gatsby’s tongue swiped across my lower lip. I trembled and moaned and his kiss deepened, that warm slick tongue delved into me and took my breath and a couple of heartbeats. I felt my flattened lungs and my dizzy heart wringing, struggling for life, and the world collapsed. I shoved Gatsby back with one hand, and when our lips smacked apart, the world exploded. I gasped for breath and held on tight as everything spun around us.

“Jay,” I panted. His hands touched mine where I was fisting his expensive clothes—his fingers were shaking as much as I was and the discovery sent a thrill through my body that made me giddy and playful. I dragged him backwards so that we bounced onto the bed and he propped up on an elbow beside me and laughed as we resumed those devouring kisses. I liked it even better this way, with him over me, pressing me into his soft pillows, his free arm draped over my torso, hand splayed at my waist where his fingers dug into me here and there when the kisses couldn’t be any deeper but he wanted more.

I wanted more too, and that’s why I uncurled my fingers from his shirt and caressed his neck and face and wrapped one arm around him which quickly made its way down his hard back to the plush flesh of his ass, which made a good thing to hold onto. He gasped when I did, and his fingers dug into my waist, slipped lower to clutch at my sharp hipbone.

“Nick,” he said to me whenever I let him have his tongue back, “this is so much fun---isn’t this—have you ever had this much fun?”

I shook my head. I looked up at him and he looked down at me, smiling. I combed my fingers through his hair, finding it as thick as it looked and full of heat at the roots and he shivered from the cooling effect of my blunt nails over his scalp. When he kissed me again it was a softer thing and I couldn’t tell which type of kiss I liked better so I made sure we alternated from one to the other to make comparison easier.

“You’re a good kisser,” Jay said to me after a few minutes of this new rhythm. Our mouths had gone a little tasteless but neither of us wanted to stop. I preened and let him roll off his elbow, because surely his whole arm was asleep by now. He sank on his back into the pillows and, wanting closeness more than his mouth at the moment I took my turn over him but settled there with my ear to his heart.

He did not object, even caged me there with his numb arm and pressed his mouth to the top of my head. I stared at his room from this vantage point, memorizing what it felt like to have a body pressed against mine. Jay’s I had known all my life—his shadow, his silhouette, his gait—but here I had to relearn it by touch. His strict exercise routine kept him lean with muscle that rippled under his skin like a cobra in every way he moved. I know I looked as fit as he, but in place of coiled strength, I had softness and where I didn’t have softness I had nothing but bone and pale skin and I began to feel a little wretched for not adopting his routine with him all those times he had invited me to.

I knew in that moment that if we had not been friends since diapers, then he would not have chosen to solve this particular mystery with me. He’d have found the perfect specimen, perhaps not _Tom_ , but someone built like that.

“What’s the matter, old sport?” Jay asked when I had been quiet for too long. And perhaps my breathing had altered itself as I considered my outlandish good luck to be here.

“Nothing,” I choked lightly. I didn’t want to point out to him that I was hardly worthy of him. As his truest friend I could say this: his greatest fault was in needing perfection. It was a fault we shared. In this case it worked for and against me. Jay Gatsby was perfection, but I was not.

“We won’t tell anyone,” he whispered and I realized he had mistaken my sudden mood as nerves. At the reminder my heart seized because this sort of thing—it could never carry on outside of a locked room. No one would see Jay and I hand in hand or sharing a chocolate malt like the other couples. The thought instantly depressed me further and I sat up, put my feet to the floor.

“Nick—don’t go,” he insisted quickly, catching my wrist. I lost my breath and could not move another inch. He sat up and put his feet back on the floor as well, our sides mashed together. “Please?”

I thought about crossing the monolithic lawn and being in my tiny bedroom alone with this kind of mounting panic. “I can’t go home now.”

“Not right now,” he agreed, “We have a lot to talk about, wouldn’t you say? Everything has just changed so completely—I didn’t think it could be _like this_.”

He was hardly making sense to me but I had to add my own confusion to the turmoil. “It’s all happening so fast,” I said, and “You’re so great but I-I’m just a nobody” and “I don’t want anything to mess up our friendship, Jay” and by the time I had rambled into such abstract territory such as “Daisy’s my cousin—“ Jay saw fit to take control of the situation,

“What? No, didn’t you hear me, old sport? I don’t care about Daisy not _like this_.”

I blinked owlishly at him. “Like this?”

“It’s so different,” Jay breathed. His face was so close to mine, filled up my vision with blue eyes that soaked me up as his fingers swept lightly, unexpectedly, across my jaw to my ear and then settled on my neck. “I thought it would be interesting I—I didn’t know it would feel so good. Did you?”

“I never thought about it,” I admitted. “I didn’t know what I wanted, only—only that I didn’t want it to be like it is with everybody else. This kind of thing shouldn’t be a game; it should be forever.”

I had succeeded in both embarrassing myself and cowing my poised friend on this matter. He looked apologetic and ashamed and I realized with a jolt that he had initiated the entire experiment out of boredom and I, after all of my philosophizing on the matter, had allowed myself to get fooled around with.

This angered me tremendously but I didn’t breathe a word because I had not forgotten what it was Jay had been saying with such wonder in his voice. It felt good. He had fooled around into some serious matters and now we were both forever changed.

“You’re right.” He released me and stood up, straightening his clothes, and repeating, “You’re right…”

He crossed the room and messed with the phonograph machine as if the last half hour had not just passed with our bodies pressed together, sharing breath. I sat on the edge of his bed, stricken with the sense that I had just messed something up. I was ready to slip out of there and go home after all when he turned suddenly, squinting at me,

“Nick, you know I—“ he had started too loudly and lowered his voice to the appropriate volume, “You’re always going to be my best friend, understand.” He swallowed and failed to look at me as the word tripped out of him, “Forever.”

My fingers and toes tingled. I lifted my eyebrows hopefully. With a shy glance or two, he slowly returned to the bed and sat next to me, leaving space between our bodies. I turned to face him, dragged a knee onto the mattress and a pillow into my lap to hold so that my hands didn’t feel so empty. “What does this mean, Jay? The kids at school—my parents, people are going to stop this. Don’t you even remember that Klipspringer kid? Remember what happened to him? He’s locked up now, Jay. His parents had him _committed_.”

Jay took hold of my face and his lips stopped my panicked ramble. The lip kiss shocked through me like electricity at first, a vivid flash of lightening that was my fear for allowing this kind of dangerous liaison, but then Jay lingered and we melted into a mouth kiss, the warmth of which washed through me like a cleanser and for a moment there was nothing wrong and the universe was in perfect alignment.

“I don’t care,” he whispered when the kiss ended. “They can’t stop this.”

“They’ll try pretty hard.”

“They won’t even know about it,” he promised. I closed my eyes and tried to believe it. _Maybe_. I spent so much time over here already and no one said anything. Maybe we _could_ get away with it. My heart hurt from wanting it so badly.

“Call and make sure you can spend the night.”

This was something he usually said and something I usually did without a second thought in the matter. My parents generally let it happen unless we had family visiting, which was often but not at the moment. I _could_ spend the night—but after what just happened in broad daylight, I for the first time asked myself if I _dared_ test the night.

My heart pounded in my ears. I looked closely at my best friend to gauge his intentions with me, hardly believing that he could make such a suggestion minutes after I had stated so plainly that this sort of thing was not a game to me. But his eyes glittered with it and the pull in my own belly told me that I wasn’t so against the idea after all.

I telephoned. My parents agreed that I need not cross the grass that night. They, I think, had a soft spot in their heart for Jay, and did not like to think about him being in the big house by himself too often. I imagine they thought they were giving us both something we needed but could not have, a brother.

Until that afternoon on his bed, I would have called him that. Now Jay Gatsby was a friend—a dear friend, and possibly….possibly even a lover.

Jay informed the cook that I was staying for dinner and breakfast, and again this was so common place that it hardly made a ripple. I felt drunk with the freedom and became so shy against the possibilities that I could barely look at him and we said very little to each other at dinner. I for one had a great deal on my mind, for if I allowed it (or took the initiative and went for it) I would lose my virginity tonight in a most unexpected manner.

Though I had been picky as to the means, I was like any young man and more than ready to shed that shackle and cross over once and for all into adulthood. Its gravity and significance to the rest of my life had contributed to my high standards and was _now_ the leading reason for me to pass through the threshold tonight with my best friend. Who _else_ could I possibly trust well enough? No one. Who _else_ even made me feel this certain about it? No one.

Only Jay.

By the time dinner was over and I got into the bath I had fairly decided that I would do it. I stayed so regularly on school nights that my using his utilities had long lost its novelty on us, but tonight it was new again. I thought of him naked in this tub and felt my skin heat up and darken with a rush of blood. I had been half hard since our first kiss and I hardened more now as I came to a crossroads.

It was now or never. I could rub it away right now, in the privacy and comfort of his tub (also fairly commonplace by that point) and resume the life I’ve had all my life, _or_ I could get off with Jay tonight and let everything change.

My wet fingers trembled on the cold porcelain lip of the tub and my gut clenched and my breath stuttered. I wanted the change. I had not wanted anything with such intensity in my life and that frightened me. It amounted to wanting my own death. I wouldn’t be Nick anymore. I would be—I didn’t know what I would be.

I toweled off, dressed in the pajamas that I had adopted from Gatsby’s closet, and went to his room. There were entire levels of the house devoted to guests, and I had stayed my share of nights in almost all of them, but the most common practice was for us to lounge in his big bed, head to tail, under different blankets, and talk or listen to music until sleep stole us.

When I found him in his silk pajamas under one blanket looking as excited but nervous as I felt, the majority of my trepidation dropped off like a heavy sack slipping off my shoulder. Tonight would change me, but it would change him, too. True, I would cease to be Nick. But I would become _Jay’s_ and Jay would be _Nick’s_. We would trade names.

I was in love with that idea.

“We don’t have to do anything unless—unless you know, it feels right,” he said, cowed again, this time by nothing but an inquisitive quirk of my eyebrow. He knew a moment later it had only been a tease when I smiled boldly and slipped beneath the same blanket, head at his mound of pillows. His eyes flashed with excitement and he rolled a little closer. I closed my eyes and let him kiss me.

The closeness under the blankets and the new texture of the silk pajamas between our warm bodies made it a whole new experience for me and I wondered about it for him. He had been with plenty of girls before—but all in the back of his car. This had to be as wildly different from his experiences as it was for me.

He wasted no time bracing himself on both elbows over top of me, our bodies flush against each other so that I felt every inch of his manhood growing against me as mine grew against him. His weight atop me took my breath and made my hips jump involuntarily against him in uncontrolled bumps. He rocked back against me; our tongues and lips dancing as our bodies slid together with the ease and silence of cold silk melting in the heat of our embrace until it was a pliant second skin between us.

I was harder than I had ever been, so stiff it ached and throbbed and leaked enough to soak through the pants. The filth of it did strange things to me. The smell and the naughtiness quickened my blood and I wanted more. I spread my legs and caged him closer, harder, against me, whimpering in desperation.

Our kisses broke and he gasped into the pillows, rocking faster. I clung to him, writhing beneath him in the enveloping heat under the blanket and whimpering again when his mouth latched onto my neck. We were sweating and stuttering for breath and humping against each other frantically, heartbeats so loud we could not hear our choked sounds of frustration.

My hands slid down his back and clutched at his ass. Every move his body made against mine felt so good that I could not think, did not consider that there was more to the practice than this. My fevered mind had one goal in it, and that was for this burning itch in my groin to burst into sharp relief like a firecracker into the night. I needed to come so badly that I was growling and didn’t even know it.

Jay stopped suddenly and kissed me. It was a deep kiss that distracted me temporarily from the aggravating absence of friction against my stark arousal, and then his hand plunged beneath the elastic waistband and gripped me, naked and burning at the touch.

I choked and cried out, clutching at him in a kind of panic at the acute sensation as he began to treat me as one would treat himself. My eyes crossed and my body shook with quakes of pleasure as his hand dragged slowly base to head in a firm grip.

“Do it to me,” he rasped, shakily. I fumbled for the draw string on his bottoms and got my hand into his clothes where I found the same kind of damp heat, hair and rigid flesh. I closed my fist around it and pumped it like I wanted to be pumped. He moaned into my shoulder and growled a little himself, some swear words.

            I marveled at how intoxicating and world-leveling a touch could be, when it was essentially nothing I could not do to myself but so much better in the heat of another’s hand, the sweat of two bodies and the pulse of two hearts in a struggle for release _given_ as much as it was taken. I wanted Jay to come first just as badly as my body hammered for its own break.

            “Please,” I gasped. A sudden urge swamped me, and I shoved our clothes out of the way so that I could put the head of his cock against mine. We bumped and slid the slits together until we were grasping ourselves and each other and Jay was moving again, sliding himself against my length in the tunnel of our hands. My fist being on top, I took the liberty to swipe freely at the leaking slits until he began to shake and couldn’t stop. His thrusts went erratic and then he broke over my fist, stroking through.

My heart was beating up my throat and I clung to his trembling body as the fire from his burning, slick touch bubbled over inside of me. With a twist in my lower abdomen, by balls drew up sharp against my body, and something crashed through me with enough force to lift my hips off the bed. Jay had released himself but kept me in hand, skimming his lose grip up and down in a way I had neglected to appreciate as necessary when operating alone. Under his touch, my seed didn’t just spit out of me as a final note but _crawled_ in pulses until I was bled dry and dizzy.

I couldn’t breathe and my eyes stung with tears and I too, had begun to shake. I grasped weakly at him. “Jay…oh my God…oh my God… _Jay_ that was—that was,”

“Incredible,” he rasped.

“You can say that again,” I laughed giddily and the tears welled out, slipping fast down my over-heated face. “I’m so-so happy that it was—it was _good_ and I--”

“Me too,” he promised. I held onto him. He held back.

“Do you really?”

He grunted and I sniffed, a little embarrassed that the emotion had the better of me like that. I hastily dried my eyes but he caught me up in a hug that prevented me from catching the new swell of salt water. I scoffed at myself, the silliness. “I don’t know why I’m…” I didn’t want to call it crying. I wasn’t sad.

“It’s okay,” he assured, stroking my arm.

“Don’t you feel it?” I had to ask once I had ascertained by his calm breathing that he was not half as affected by all of this as I was. I went to an elbow over him and tried to blink away the darkness, but all I could see was his shadowy outline. “How _right_ this is?”

He nodded because I had taken his face in hand and could feel the answer his voice couldn’t give. I put my forehead to his silk-clad chest, where I could hear his heart thumping wildly still. It eased me to know that he was not as cool and collected as he appeared. As I lay on him, his breath even hitched once.

“Nick... I’m glad you waited.”

“Hm?”

“It’s not like this with other people.”

“No?”

“No. It’s nothing at all like this good and… and… I like being your first.”

“I like you being my first, too,” I whispered. Then I grinned. “And I like being your first boy, at least.”

Jay laughed softly. “I’m going to change,” he said.

I took him to mean his pajamas, and I hummed in agreement, thinking I would also change into some dry pants, but Jay didn’t move and I blinked. “Change how?”

“I’m going to stop fooling around like I’ve been doing. I’m going to treat you better like—like you deserve after something like this. It’s a trade-off don’t you see? I wasn’t considering it correctly. See, before I thought of it as just a game and everyone was a winner but now….now, see, you’ve shown me what it is. You’ve given me something major here, Nicky. You’ve given me something you can’t get back and so I’m going to treat you right for it. I’m going to…” he was thinking straight out loud, planning, and I couldn’t breathe as I listened to him, “I’m going to take care of you. And keep you. Because I love you.”

A tremor shot down my spine so hard and fast I bucked into him. He clutched at me. I struggled for breath and to keep my eyes dry. “I love you too, Jay.”

“That’s what this is. It’s so different than all the times before. We love each other and we made it _real_.”

“Yeah,” I agreed weakly, face pressed into his pectoral, smiling. In that moment, we were invincible and the world was ours. My heart beat to the tune of _Jay loves me_ _and he’s keeping me_. He had said he would and he could. His money would protect us, after all, screen us from unwanted eyes. Nothing could stop us being together.

He ran his fingers through my hair until we fell asleep.


End file.
